Kane Williamson: Nice to play IPL before Champions Trophy

SportsCafe Desk

BySportsCafe Desk,SportsCafe Editor

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Kane Williamson believes that the IPL has given him the best preparation for the Champions Trophy to be held in England next month. The ace New Zealand batsman also said that defending champions Sunrisers Hyderabad will need to play their best cricket in order to beat Rising Pune Supergiant today.

"I think it's just nice to play a little bit of cricket in this tournament going into a major tournament like Champions Trophy. I suppose it is nice to play some cricket from my perspective personally. The rest of the New Zealand squad is getting together back home for preparations for the Champions Trophy," Williamson told a news conference.

Speaking about Hyderabad’s clash against Rising Pune Supergiant on Saturday, the Kiwi said, "Every game is a real challenge. So, it is important to stay very grounded. We have been playing some good cricket, but so is Pune. It will really be a tough game. Every game is hard, so we need to try and play our best cricket.

"Every match is important. You want to continue the momentum. We obviously had a close game against Delhi that we lost, but we still played some good cricket. So, we want to continue playing good cricket. Hopefully get (wins) in one or two matches, which can put us in the knock-outs."

While Hyderabad have won all their home games, the side has failed to replicate it in away games, having won just one in six matches. They failed to defend a competitive 185 against Delhi Daredevils in the previous match.

"I suppose in the last game for the opposition to chase down 185 runs meant that they had to play really well. There are a couple of areas we want to improve on. But there was (were) lot of positives that we can take from that game and hopefully put into our next match," he said.

"We look at each game as an individual match. We want to play our best cricket and try to get those two points. Like I mentioned, we had a loss in Delhi but that can happen.

"In fact, no one's gone unbeaten so far and it's a very real thing particularly in Twenty20 cricket and it's important we take that in our stride and look to move on."

Asked to compare this season to last year's triumphant run,  the Sunrisers batsman said. "The team has been playing really well. Probably better than last year at this point. Obviously, last year, to win it was a great feeling. But we had to do it in a hard way. We had to play two semifinals and showed that fight that we needed to get through those different hurdles."

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